


The High Road

by psocoptera



Series: Thirty Fic [25]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: 30Fic, Backstory, F/M, Family Relationships - Freeform, Flashbacks, Future Fic, Hawk Moth is Gabriel Agreste, Identity Reveal, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: Fifteen years in the future, Marinette works with Alya to figure out if Hawkmoth is back, while as a teen, she and Chat Noir try to find him in the first place.(Standalone story, see notes for series explanation.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> The Thirty Fic series is my long-term ongoing project of writing stories about characters turning or being thirty. The stories aren't related except by that one common thread. Marinette is thirty in this story.
> 
> I had a lot of fun doing fashion science fiction for this story and inventing a couture scene for Marinette to be working in. Most of the details aren't important; please feel free to mentally substitute the words "fashion technobabble" for anything you find confusing or tedious.

2031, and a girl is running on the rooftops of Paris.

Marinette's eyes are tired from a long day, and at first she thinks she's imagining movement, or turning a stray leaf or a pigeon into something out of her memories. But, no, there she is again, and Marinette springs to the window: a girl in green, as slim as a flower-stem, with a long, gauzy, multi-part cloak floating behind her catching all the colors of the sunset as she runs. She's quickly out of sight of the window, no matter how Marinette cranes her neck, and for a wild moment Marinette thinks of running down the stairs, out into the street, to do - what?

It's been half her life since she was up there, since that last, breathless run. She doesn't have a way to get off the ground any more, or a job to do when she's there.

All she can do is press her hands and face against the glass and stand there, lost in memories.

*  
_2016, and a girl is running on the rooftops of Paris. It's the last time, but she doesn't know that, has no idea whether their improbable plan will work, but it's working so far: up ahead of her the thread has tangled on another antenna, and the butterfly flutters at the end of its long, fine leash._

*  
2031

She calls Alya, of course.

"I know!" Alya squeals - she's nothing but professional on the parliament beat, but with Marinette she's the same old Alya. "Someone got her on video leaping between blocks, I saw it! Do you think it's starting again? Do you think it's a Miraculous?"

"I don't know," Marinette says. "Master Fu said there's always another cycle, but I thought he meant something longer."

Alya knows the whole story, everything that was Marinette's to tell. Alya had kissed her, one night in lycée, and Marinette, unable to give her what she wanted, had closed her eyes and given her the best thing she could. Marinette sometimes thinks it's what's kept them close while her other collège friends have drifted away. As long as she can talk to Alya, the Marinette who was Ladybug isn't entirely gone.

"Are you going to try to contact him? Are you going to investigate?"

"I assume _we're_ going to investigate," Marinette says fondly, and Alya grins at her onscreen.

"Already started," she declares, and Marinette holds her fist up to the screen for Alya to pantomime bumping, like an echo of her old gesture with Chat Noir.

*  
_2016_

_"We can't keep doing this," Chat Noir had said._

_Marinette - Ladybug - had put her hand over his hand on her arm. "We won the battle," she had said, a little stung. "We're okay." Her stomach had clenched at the thought that he meant something more than not liking how the latest akuma fight had gone, that he might (surely not?) want to break up their partnership._

_"I started thinking about it after the first time with Volpina," Chat Noir had said. "It's been over a year, and we've never even seen Hawkmoth. It's just the same thing over and over, purifying akumas, and we're not getting any closer to stopping him. What if one of these days he gets lucky?"_

_"I don't think he_ can _be as lucky as the Lucky Charm," Marinette had reassured him, squeezing his hand where it was somehow still in hers. But she had gone home and thought about it._

_"We have to track one of the butterflies," she had told Chat Noir, next time she saw him. "It's the only connection we have to Hawkmoth."_

_Master Fu had told her there was another way, that the Peacock Miraculous could find anyone or anything - but that wasn't very helpful when it itself was missing too._

_"How do you track a butterfly?" Chat Noir had asked. "Could your Lucky Charm make something that would do it, like... I don't know, magic binoculars?"_

_"The things it makes are ordinary, not magical," Marinette had said. "Besides, all our battles have been so close lately, I don't think we can finish one without using it, and the butterfly will be long gone before I can transform again."_

_They had sat on a roof, brainstorming and researching. Could they keep up with a butterfly if they were traveling by yoyo/baton? Their Miraculous travel was fast, but moving in giant leaps and bounds worked better for chasing something easy to spot like a robot than something tiny and maneuverable. Chat Noir suggested a hang glider, but just watching the fall leaves blowing from the trees, they could tell the Paris winds would not cooperate. A toy drone with a camera would be even less maneuverable than they were. Marinette got online and it turned out scientists really could track butterflies by gluing tiny radio transmitters to their abdomens -_

_"But where would we get one of those?" Marinette despaired. "It's not like we can just order that on Amazon."_

_"A scientist might help Ladybug, if you asked," Chat Noir had said. "Lots of super teams have a gadget guy."_

_"That feels wrong to me," she had said. "Bringing in more people - I don't know, I just feel like the answer has to come from us. Because we're the ones who were chosen for this."_

_"Aww, you're all the team I need too, Bugaboo," he had said, and Marinette had rolled her eyes but thought in her heart that he was right._

*  
2031

Marinette wants nothing more than to go home, throw together a salad, and try to figure out how she feels about the reappearance of superheroes and/or supervillains in her life. Unfortunately, three more orders have come in to the fab shop while she was calling Alya, and two are super rush, and super rush is central to the print-from-sketch franchise's branding, so Marinette is not going home until two customers are walking out the door with fresh-off-the-dryer custom garments.

She opens the files, fingers crossed for easy jobs. She's in luck with one of them - a pretty standard honeycomb bodice, designed by a repeat customer with a good sense of how sketches turn out in 3D - the places where she's tweaked the template are all structurally sound, Marinette just has to finesse the pattern wrap a little and she can drop it in the print queue. The other one, though, is a nightmare - if Marinette printed it as it's drawn, the customer wouldn't even be able to get into it, let alone move her arms, the fractal lattice is the kind that inevitably puts a heavy line somewhere unflattering, and the customer's bodyscan is secondhand from a mall boutique that Marinette wouldn't trust to scan a right cylinder. So basically she's going to have to rework it from scratch and hope she can get something close to what her customer was imagining. The customer has allowed contact, so Marinette should be able to at least check in with her before she commits the materials to print the thing, but she's probably looking at a one-star review if she can't capture the right feeling in her design.

In theory, this is the excitement and challenge of being an adaptation artist for print-from-sketch.

In practice, it's times like this that Marinette really misses the business model where she cut up cloth, sewed it back together, and then tried to get people to buy it.

Before she plunges into it, Marinette does a quick search for pictures of the customer - she's fourteen, so direct image-search is blocked, but sometimes you can weasel around it. Teens these days are such a weird combination of disciplined and careless in their online lives, Marinette feels a hundred years old...

Bingo. A brunette with proportions matching the bodyscan, within mall-scanner errors, and a screen name associated with her contact info on one of the greyweb wholink sites. Nice length in the torso, space for Marinette to drop the cuirass's waist a little and float the pauldrons... she falls into a working trance and forgets to worry about superheroes, lost in the work of bringing a teen's fashion fantasy to life.

*  
_2016_

_Marinette had been hand sewing when it had hit her. They had been thinking about it all wrong. They didn't need a fancy tracker or a hang glider, all they needed was to slow the butterfly down. If a butterfly could carry a radio tracker half its weight, it could carry, say, a ten-meter loop of fine thread, an anchor to snag on trees and corners until they freed it to continue leading them back to Hawkmoth step by step. If the butterflies even really did go back to Hawkmoth. So they had done it, captured the purified butterfly and held it in the net while they fed their kwamis on either side of a wide chimney, and then, retransformed, tied the thread around it, and here they were..._

_Marinette runs, swoops, Chat Noir behind her, following their unlikely hound to a hopefully unsuspecting fox._

*  
2031

Marinette doesn't want to show up empty-handed to her lunch with Alya, so she prints off a quick ladybug-spotted rerebrace, the kind of piece that will either amuse or charm Alya. It's a small piece, almost just an arm cuff, and there's hardly time before the print heads finish whirling around to ask herself what she's hoping Alya has or hasn't found. She pops it into the bath and watches the printing compounds dissolve out in a cloud, transfers it to the dryer, and there it is, a flexible semi-tube shaped to Alya's upper arm, printed in one of the stiffer polymers for a texture somewhere between vinyl and basketry.

"You shouldn't have!" Alya exclaims, when Marinette tosses it to her, but she immediately tries it on over the sleeve of her purple shirt. Alya will probably try to pay for lunch, but then, she was already going to; this way Marinette will feel like it balances out a little better.

"So," Alya says. "I had to swap favors with three of my fave public cam hunters, but check this out." She opens her screen and taps the first of three queued-up videos. It's another girl, jumping down from a rooftop, but this one is shorter, curvier, dressed in sleek chestnut fur. Or maybe it's not clothing, there's something distinctly inhuman about her ears...

"Huh," Marinette says.

"Three weeks ago," Alya says. "Next one, two weeks ago." It's a grainy three seconds of someone with impossibly long stripey legs running past a storefront.

"Let me guess," Marinette says. "Last one, one week ago?"

"Last one three days ago," Alya says. In the corner of the video, a boy in silver leaps from a bridge into the Seine - and then _up_ again, arcing up like a dolphin.

"I think finswimmers can maybe do that," Marinette says.

"Yeah, but he's not wearing a fin on the way down," Alya says, and Marinette watches it again. He's not, and then he is.

"So what do you think, o expert," Alya says. "Akumatized?"

Marinette lets out a slow breath.

"I don't know," she says. "None of them are bothering anybody. We didn't even hear about any of them until you went looking - digging pretty deep, right? Nobody put up bystander video."

"No one's said anything about them at all, at least not anywhere searchable," Alya says. "But the timing between them - that's about right for Hawkmoth. Don't you think he might be back?"

*  
_2016_

_"Huh, we're near Adrien's house," Marinette says, and then - "Is it going into Adrien's attic?"_

_There's a sort of aperture in the roof that she's never noticed before, a big round window with no glass in the center pane. As they watch, shutters start to close over it, and the butterfly flutters through._

_Her partner is a blur of motion past her._

_"Chat, wait - " she says, but he's already crashing through the window, and all she can do is follow._

*  
2031

"It can't be Hawkmoth," Marinette says. "Master Fu said he would be safe in the secret valley forever, that they would never let him go."

"I always thought it was a bad idea to keep him in the same place as the Miraculouses," Alya says. "Like, we know he's cunning, patient, and obsessed, of course he's going to try to steal one again? I always thought they should do, like, Miraculouses North Pole, Gabriel Agreste South Pole."

"Alya!" Marinette whisper-shouts. Alya tucks her chin apologetically.

"Oops, sorry," she says. "But do you have a way to contact the valley, to find out if anything's happened?"

Marinette shakes her head. "If someone is using the Peacock Miraculous and decided to check in on me, there's a chance they could see that I want to talk to them and contact me. But I don't even know if anyone would have it right now. Master Fu made it sound like nobody was going to have any of them for awhile."

"Boy would I have liked a crack at that one," Alya sighs. "Being able to see anything? Past, present, even possible futures? That's a reporter's dream power, right there."

Marinette shudders. "I still think it's creepy that someone could be watching me from the future," she says. "Or the past - you know the, uh, former Peacock told me she'd had a vision of me and Chat Noir flying on a dragon, before Hawkmoth took her Miraculous? Like a long time before. I was just a little kid then!"

"I guess it was destiny," Alya shrugs. "Would _she_ know what's going on with these new supervillains?"

Marinette sighs. "I have no idea. I doubt she would tell us anything; I tried to contact her once, a few years ago, all I got back was a form reply, 'Madame You-know has retired from public life.'"

"You never told me that," Alya says softly. Marinette looks away.

"I'm fine, Alya. I think everyone gets to think about their past occasionally, right?"

Alya nods, looking thoughtful. "I'm going to try to reach her," she says after a moment. "Madame of the eyes, I mean. They would have to tell _her_ if Hawkmoth escaped, I mean, if anyone would need to know! Other than that I guess all we can do is get out there and hope to be on-site if something goes down. I'm thinking Eiffel and Louvre, akumas always liked those."

"Or our school," Marinette says. "I guess we should start mapping and everything?"

"Oh," Alya says, tapping the screen. "Here." Three dots make a rough triangle touching the Seine, with no obvious relation to the former Agreste mansion.

"Okay," Marinette says, and rolls her eyes at Alya paying the check while she's distracted.

*  
_2016_

_Hawkmoth's transformation ends just as their feet hit the attic floor._

_"Son?" he says, white butterflies clouding up between them, and beside her, Chat Noir answers, "Father?"_

_*  
1994, and a girl is running on the rooftops of Paris, the long train of her dress streaming behind her. A woman, really - at least a decade younger than the man who stands on a balcony watching, arms folded, but old enough that if you could look into her eyes, you'd be struck by their gravity._

_*  
2016_

_"Adrien," Gabriel Agreste says, and Marinette is dizzy and frozen all at once. "I suppose it's time to tell you some things."_

*  
2031

Marinette adds a few blocks to her walk to work in the morning, seeking busier streets, parks, crowded sidewalk cafes, places where people jostle and angry feelings might erupt into monsters. She doesn't see anything like that. If anything, Paris is more cheerful than usual: flowers are blooming, the sun is out, exams are still comfortably in the future and the news on the feeds is mostly good.

When she gets to work, a bunch of orders have queued up during the night, but it's all easy stuff, collars and gorgets and the fantastical, sculptural hats, meant to be worn over hijab, currently popular with hijab-wearing teens. Marinette likes hats in general - they're fun - and the kids are so creative with what they come up with. She has a daytime employee to work the back of the shop, transferring items into and out of the bath and dryer and making sure the printers stay stocked with polymer feedstocks, so she can stay in front, taking walk-in customers and doing consults with people who need a little help with their designs. The spring weather has everyone eager to get out of winter clothes and into something new. She helps one young man with an intricate, architectural jacket to be printed in a polymer like a stiff felt, that's a genuinely lovely piece, and he agrees to model it when he picks it up for photos for the store's image feed.

The collars and things get picked up as their ready times arrive. Both the items and customers are all on schedule today, a small miracle that Marinette appreciates whenever it happens. A pair of girls comes in together for two of the hats - one a streamlined, art deco affair with a subtle nosecone and wings, and one a frothy rainbow flower crown - and Marinette eavesdrops shamelessly while she packages them up, curious how two people together have ended up with pieces so different.

"Flying or nothing," one of them says. "I don't get how anyone wants something else."

"I just like the idea that I could wave my hands and make the flowers bloom and vines grow," the other one whispers back. "I don't know, it just seems beautiful?"

Marinette smiles to herself - she had fought a vine-growing akuma once, someone upset about the ivy on their house, or someone trampling their garden, or something - she honestly can't remember now. At the time it had just been another battle to win. But there had been a moment before she threw her charm in the air, where she had looked at the vines and flowers engulfing the Eiffel Tower, when she had thought wow, yes, this was a pretty one. Even Hawkmoth couldn't help occasionally creating something awesome, like Guitar Villain's dragon, or the city of mirrors created by another akuma's mirrorizing touch.

A small part of her will probably always wonder what Gabriel Agreste would have made of the world, if he had achieved the power he sought.

*  
_1994_

_She will do nicely, the watcher decides._

_He won't fall in love with her until later._

_*  
2016_

_"You must take off that costume first, though," Gabriel Agreste tells Chat Noir, who is apparently Adrien, if Marinette is understanding anything correctly through the pounding in her ears. "I can't talk to that ridiculous bell."_

_"I - I don't think I want to do that," Chat-Adrien stammers._

_Gabriel sighs. "If you must. I have designed so many costumes for you over the years, and even my earliest efforts were better than that." He sniffs. "You see, Adrien, you were always meant to be a superhero. This time as Chat Noir is just a little wrong turn, you'll see."_

_Marinette is attuned to Chat Noir when they fight; nobody's moving an inch right now, but it still feels like the tensest battle they've ever been in. She can feel how he's reeling in confusion even as he stays steady on his feet._

_"What?" he says, and now she can hear how it's Adrien's voice._

*  
2031

Soup and bread for dinner. Marinette puts on a Paris newsfeed to see if anyone's talking about akumas, but the big news of the day seems to be a pair of baby giraffe twins born at the zoo.

She misses Tikki. All this thinking about the past has stirred up old feelings that are usually long behind her, like the loneliness she had felt after Tikki was gone. With Tikki, she had never been alone, she had always had someone to talk to. She's thought for years about getting a cat, but it just wouldn't be the same.

Alya's call is a welcome distraction.

"I thought about what you said," she tells Marinette. "About thinking about the past? And it made me think, maybe I'm too hung up on Hawkmoth. It could be anyone who knew about Miraculouses, any akuma victim. Like Gabriel was originally akumatized himself, right, and got obsessed with it? It could even be his old partner, or the old woman, anybody."

"Fifty years later?" Marinette says skeptically.

"You said Fu claimed to be like a hundred and fifty," Alya says. "Someone middle-aged when Gabriel was young could be like a hundred now, that doesn't even take magic."

"I guess we can start checking in on people who got akumatized," Marinette says. "We do know a lot of them."

"Exactly my plan," Alya says. "I'm sending you your half of the list now, good luck!"

Alya has kindly given her most of their old classmates, saving the harder ones like the pigeon guy and the zookeeper for herself and her investigative-reporter skills. And then there are the people like Red Star who Alya has only heard about third-hand - how can she possibly hope to get a lead on her?

*  
_1979, and a girl is running on the rooftops of Paris..._

_*  
1994_

_The girl with the long train folds herself into half lotus on the balcony. "Hundred Eyes," she whispers, and a blue glow rises around her head as her superpower is invoked._

_*  
2016_

_"Fencing, martial arts, modeling, basketball, piano, Chinese," Gabriel ticks off on his fingers. "I have been training you since you were little. You know how to present yourself, to handle yourself - even your name, Adrien Agreste, like all the greatest superheroes, Peter Parker, Lex Luthor, Scott Summers, Reed Richards - your mother wanted to name you Kevin." He sneers. "Hopelessly plebeian. But she always was, in some ways."_

_Adrien makes a hurt little sound, and Marinette steps closer without thinking about it, slides her red-gloved hand into his._

_"I was going to use this to make you perfect," Gabriel goes on, tapping something at his neck. "Give you every superpower you could need. But your mother had to oppose me, and then that wouldn't do, would it? That was when I knew I needed ultimate power. I suppose I have to thank her, really."_

_Adrien's hand tightens on Marinette's, and she can't breathe._

_She has no idea what to do. Take down the villain while he's monologuing, right? This is definitely monologuing. But she had always somehow assumed that when they found Hawkmoth, there would be a fight, a leaping, chasing, heavy-object-dodging showdown, and then she'd finally get him tied up in her yoyo and would pull his Miraculous away... she can't throw her yoyo at calmly talking, urbane, world-famous designer (and father of her true love) Gabriel Agreste, can she? ...can she?_

*  
2031

Rose and Juleka and Alix and Kim all seem happy to hear from their old classmate. Marinette gets the scoop about jobs, new cities, and in Rose's case, a baby on the way - pretty much all of which she's already heard and congratulated on one social feed or another, but that can't really compare to talking onscreen. She drops delicate hints about akumas but nobody seems to be thinking much about such things any more. If someone is lying to her, they're doing it smoothly and blatantly. Even Alix has enough to say about her brother that Marinette is pretty sure he's not involved either, although she possibly has to leave Alix the impression she'd had a crush on him back in collège to extract that information.

"I didn't think you could see anyone other than Adrien back then," Alix teases, and Marinette laughs along.

And then curls up in bed when the call ends, unable to face any more calls that night.

*  
_1979_

_There's a boy watching the girl. Isn't there always?_

_*  
1994_

_"I think I can do it," the girl says, after Duusu has appeared back out of the peacock brooch. "I think I can find your lost Miraculous."_

_*  
2016_

_"Enough of this," Marinette says, starting to swirl her yoyo, but Adrien steps between her and his father._

_"No, wait," he says plaintively. "What about my mother?"_

*  
2031

Marinette is working on a pteruges-inspired skirt, studded strips to hang around the waist and be worn over trousers, but she can't get the hinging right. The sketch right now looks like some weirdly solidified street-sweeping brush. It's nowhere near ready to print. Frustrated, she switches to searching image feeds for printed garments out in the wild, it's always nice when she can tag something from the shop out on the street or whatever. Customers love seeing what a piece might look like in action.

She's trawling through video from a teen club, finding some lovely shots of a girl dancing in a scaled bodice that Marinette remembers printing a few months ago, when she notices something in the background that makes her stop, go back, freeze it, loop it again.

Someone in the background is changing color while they dance, shifting through the rainbow in pulses in time with the music, and as other teens approach them and touch them they start changing color too, caught up in the same synchronized dance.

It could be video editing, it could be a flashmob and trick lighting, but Marinette is sure it's not; it's another akuma, recruiting minions by the same old akuma mind-control that turned Parisiens into mummies or knights.

"Alya," Marinette sends a message right away. "We need to find out what happened in this club! Who de-evilized that akuma? Why doesn't anyone know this is happening?"

*  
_2016_

_Gabriel chuckles. It's not a happy sound. "As soon as I have your Miraculouses you can have her back!" he tells Adrien. "Do you think I've enjoyed sending her away, month after month? Every time I touch her mind it hurts me."_

_"Wait," Adrien says, sounding unsteady. "You know where Mom is? All this time?"_

_He's dropped her hand, but Marinette wishes she was still holding it. He sounds broken._

_"Let's sit down and I'll tell you the whole story," Gabriel says smoothly. "You deserve to hear it. But we can't talk with your friend threatening me," he says, looking at Marinette, who is still swinging her yoyo. "Come downstairs, release your transformations, and I'll tell you everything."_

*  
2031

"They went home," Alya says. "They all danced for a couple of hours, and then when the club was closing, it wore off and they went home. That's literally all that happened. The club manager thought it was 'weird' and one of the kids thought it was 'fun' and Lola Rainbows herself isn't talking to me, but she made a cryptic post the day after - here, let me read this to you: 'you know when something is everything you thought it would be? that's nice.' What the hell, Marinette."

"I know I'm not a search wizard like you are, but I think I found another one just hopping friend-to-friend," Marinette says. "Someone linked to this anon post, here, let me send it to you - "

"'if you're worried about second thoughts say yes," Alya reads. "for a few hours I got to be sure everyone saw me the way I want. played basketball at LC and just walked around you know? thought it might be bad to change back but it's gonna give me the strength to get thru transition until this can be my life everyday w/o magic. if you get that butterfly you are in the luckiest luck, good luck my friends.' You think that's an akuma victim?"

"I don't know," Marinette says. "I found some other posts where people seemed to be RPing as akuma victims, or having dreams where they got akumatized. But this one seems more real because it's less elaborate, I guess?"

"I don't understand this," Alya says. "Even Hawkmoth's plan made more sense than this."

*  
_2016_

_Adrien releases his transformation immediately, and even though Gabriel has been calling him Adrien, it's still a shock to see Chat Noir replaced by her gorgeous classmate. He looks back at her, eyes wide and imploring._

_"Ladybug," he says. "I know you don't want anyone to know - but I have to know. Please?"_

_"Kid," his kwami says. It's black, with little cat ears, and under other circumstances Marinette would probably be cooing over its cuteness. "Let's just - " It trails off as Hawkmoth's kwami comes out of the shadows. It's purple and winged, and something wordless passes between them. Neither kwami says anything more._

_Marinette takes a deep breath. "I'm not turning back for you," she tells Gabriel evenly. "But -" she looks at Adrien, and then away again, before she gets flustered - "I'll let you hold my yoyo. Adrien, I mean. Okay?"_

_It's the only compromise she can think of, there in the moment, and she'll wonder later if she should have found a better way._

*  
2031

"Behold," the young man says. "I am the Shadowboxer!"

Marinette has more work to do that evening, but she's given herself an hour off for a late afternoon walk, leaving her employee at the front desk. And now she's in luck, because this rings that old akuma bell. There are a few other performers in the square, a mime and a violinist, but heads turn for the Shadowboxer, whose voice seems amplified to carry.

The Shadowboxer wears the gloves and shorts of a UFC fighter, and his shadow is long on the pavement in front of him. As Marinette watches, it peels itself up from the ground and takes on dimension.

There are gasps and exclamations, and more people start to cross the square to cluster around. Marinette has to squirm through the crowd to make sure she ends up in the front. The shadow and Shadowboxer bow to each other and begin a circling demonstration of punches, kicks, and parries. They seem perfectly matched, and their blows rock each other back, but don't injure or bruise.

Finally, as they approach each other in one tremendous symmetric flying kick, the Shadowboxer's foot lands slightly first before the shadow's, and the shadow is kicked all the way back down to lie flat and normal on the ground again. The Shadowboxer bows, the applause is thunderous, and people throw coins and bills at his feet.

He looks around, tempted, and then shakes his head. "Only for joy," he says, bowing again, and then turns and bolts through the crowd.

Marinette can't follow the way she could have, when she was Ladybug. All she can do is pull out her phone and tell Alya what she's seen.

*  
_1979_

_"I am the metamorphosis and you are the caterpillars," the old woman says, fingers toying with her butterfly brooch. Gabe rolls his eyes and looks over at Red Star, assuming they can share a laugh at her ridiculousness, but his partner is listening intently, and his face darkens._

_*  
1994_

_"We're together a long time," Lucie says. "I've seen it."_

_"Have you seen me with the Miraculous?" Gabriel asks._

_"Yes," she says. "I don't know where yet, but in every future I've seen, we find it."_

_*  
2016_

_A narrow staircase from the attic leads down through a secret door and out into Gabriel's office. Marinette can see the confusion and frustration on Adrien's face, that all along, this was here in his house._

_Gabriel motions them onto a sofa, sitting down across from them in a matching armchair, kwami on his shoulder. Marinette thinks, slightly hysterically, that this is what Adrien introducing her to his father as his girlfriend would look like, minus the kwami: her hands shaking, Gabriel eyeing her warily, Adrien desperate for this to turn out okay._

_"I was recruited when I was about your age," Gabriel starts. "She called herself Wings, and the idea was that her protégés were supposed to form a sort of symbolic East-West partnership, like the Apollo-Soyuz mission a few years earlier. Skylab had just come down, and she thought the world needed something to believe in, something to inspire people to be better. I don't know where she came from - eastern Europe somewhere, I think, but I had no ear for accents back then. She had found Red Star in Russia, to represent the East, and I was supposed to be White Star. The West."_

_He looks back and forth between Adrien and Marinette. "This was during the Cold War," he says, like it pains him to lower himself to explain what he's talking about, and Adrien nods._

_"I don't know when or how she obtained the Moth Miraculous. I never thought to ask. Your mother must have known, but she would never tell me. The longer she had her Miraculous the less she would say about what she saw. I found it, you know, and I gave it to her, when I realized I couldn't use it."_

_"My mother had a Miraculous?" Adrien says._

_"I'm getting ahead of myself," Gabriel says. "Wings would akumatize us - Red Star she gave strength and flight, and I was like Green Lantern, with the power to make things I imagined. I liked to draw comic books, back then, that was how she had picked me out... we stopped a few petty crimes, but before we ever did anything like she wanted, something big, I quarreled with Red Star, and one day they simply left."_

_"It took me many years of research and travel to find the clues that would lead me to another Miraculous, and when I finally did, I discovered I was incompatible with its nature. However, it was the exact tool I needed to find the one I was looking for. I chose your mother, a model for my fashion line, to wield it, and not long before you were born, Adrien, we finally succeeded."_

_"You were going to be White Fire, the flawless hero, flying on your wings of light. And then," Gabriel frowns, "Your mother objected."_

*  
2031

"There was an animal transformation in Belleville the other night," Alya tells Marinette. "Werewolf girl running through the streets."

"Did she bite anyone?" Marinette asks.

"No, but she set every dog in town off howling. Crazy."

Marinette is flipping back and forth from the work she's supposed to be doing to the social feeds where she's looking for supervillain news. A name in the queue catches her eye - it's another hat, even more space-age and aerodynamic, designed by the girl who had come in with her flower-crown friend. Marinette doesn't usually get repeat orders so soon - 3D-printed isn't the cheapest kind of fashion - and she makes sure that she's at the desk when the girl comes to pick it up.

She's there with her friend again, who watches while the first girl adjusts her hijab and tries on the hat in the store mirror.

"This has to work, it just has to!" the first girl says.

"Are you sure it counts as homemade?" the second girl says. "They say homemade is better, if you can make something appropriate."

"The stylist likes well-made too," the first girl says. "Or well-used, but what am I supposed to bring, a paper airplane?"

Marinette takes a breath. "If you're having trouble getting a design right, I'm happy to consult," she says in her best friendly-to-customers voice. "Totally free, and I'd rather see you get exactly what you want than get something off the printer that isn't quite right."

The two girls smile nervously.

"That's okay, madame," the first one says. "Thank you though."

"Is it for a special project?" Marinette asks gently. "I was a design student once upon a time, I was in a few competitions..."

"You wouldn't have heard of this one, madame," the girl says. It's polite, but she's clearly humoring Marinette, and Marinette remembers what it sounds like when teens think they're ahead of the grownups.

"Alya," she says, making the call as soon as the girls are out of the store, "Get your cam hunters to track every appearance they can of this hat," and sends Alya the images of the latest hat. "I have a feeling."

*  
_1979_

_Gabe strikes Red Star in the face with the glove he's made, and his punch sends her flying back off the roof, into the darkness._

_*  
2002_

_"It will be good for a long time," Lucie whispers to her sleeping son, and curses herself for falling in love with his tiny face the first time she saw it in her future vision._

_*  
2016_

_"I had to take her Miraculous," Gabriel says. "I had to send her away. Her letters, her calls - you understand why I can't let them through, don't you? She can dig up the past, but she can't see my vision, she can't see how glorious it could be. Paris as it should be, a true City of Lights, everything clean and right and beautiful, and you and your mother, my perfect models, just like it used to be, but better."_

_"I don't understand," Adrien says. "I don't understand why I can't see her. Why - why would you let me think she disappeared?"_

_Marinette wants to wrap her arms around him, tuck his face into her neck and protect him from any more revelations._

_She's desperately afraid that Gabriel is still lying about sending Adrien's mother away._

_"I can feel her pain every time she gets close," Gabriel says. "I can take it away for a little while with one of my akumas. But she always comes back."_

_"I want to see her," Adrien says. "I want to call her, right now!"_

_Maybe Marinette is wrong, and Adrien's mother isn't dead. Maybe Gabriel really has been akumatizing her to send her back to wherever she's been living. That's still pretty horrible._

_"Give me your Miraculous," Gabriel says. "You're right, it was never supposed to be like this, I thought I would win and then White Fire could defeat Hawkmoth, Paris would be grateful, and we would all be together again as a family. I didn't realize luck was always on your side."_

_Adrien twists the ring on his finger. "How long have you known I was Chat Noir?" he asks. "Why didn't you just... take it, like you took Mom's?"_

_He twists the ring again, and Marinette's stomach lurches._

*  
2031

"Public park," Alya says onscreen, sending Marinette a map while she talks. "She was there in the hat yesterday afternoon, and they searched her face and put her there several times before that. Whole pack of teens in all kinds of weird costumes, doing all kinds of weird things - I honestly did not know there were that many teen bagpipers in Paris. Do you think they're some kind of cult? I think we might have a cult. And I can't go check them out, because guess who has an actual third date with hot museum girl."

"Oh, nice!" Marinette says. "I mean, she sounded nice."

"I wouldn't reschedule her for a cult of supervillain-worshipping teens," Alya says. "There's not many people I would say that about. Can I convince you to not go without me?"

"If you really meant that, you wouldn't have already sent me the map," Marinette says.

Alya shakes her head. "That's fair. But try to remember you don't have superpowers any more? Maybe nobody's gotten hurt so far, but akumas are no joke."

"I never forget," Marinette says, and goes to tell her employee they're closing up early today.

*  
_2016_

_"It doesn't matter," Gabriel says. "And this way is better. You can even keep being Chat Noir if you like that better, although we've got to get rid of that bell. Just join me, and this whole time, this awful time since she left, can be a bad memory."_

_Like it's in slow motion, Marinette sees Adrien's fingers tighten on his ring, sees him start to pull, and she reaches out her hand and says "Wait!"_

_"Adrien, listen," Marinette says. "This is crazy. Your dad shouldn't need ultimate power to fix things with your mom. Haha, hasn't he heard of roses and chocolates?"_

_Nobody laughs, and Marinette wishes she could sink into the floor, but Ladybug doesn't back down._

_"We were given our Miraculouses for a reason, and it wasn't to hand them over to the villain we've been fighting! He's been akumatizing your mom," Marinette says. "Let's just - let's just get out of here and go find her! We can do it, we found him!"_

_Slowly, horribly slowly, Adrien shakes his head, and behind him, Gabriel starts to smile._

_"I'm sorry, Ladybug," he says. "I never thought I would say this, but I guess I've been on the wrong side all along." He takes a deep breath. "Plagg, claws out!"_

*  
2031

There's a girl in a Renaissance gown, and a boy in a Spiderman costume. There's a girl juggling four clubs, although she keeps dropping one, and an nb teen with a pouch of glitter. There are, in fact, three different bagpipers, and they're not playing the same song. The hijabi girl in the dramatic hat is sitting with her friend, letting another girl sketch their portrait. And there are a few other kids milling around, dressed in ordinary clothes, not doing anything in particular.

There are a few adults passing through, walking dogs and the like, but none settling in, and Marinette feels like a giant creep lurking around them.

"Okay," one of the not-obviously-dressed-up girls says suddenly, putting away her phone and jumping up onto a bench. "I'm Paintstroke, and I spent last Sunday in my favorite painting in the Louvre, and I see we have a couple of newbies today, so let me tell you what I know about how this works!"

There are a few woo-hoos, and one of the bagpipers plays a drawn-out note.

"One, we're not the only gathering," she says, ticking items off her fingers, "So maybe nobody gets chosen from here. Two, maybe nobody gets chosen at all. The Stylist can read your mind and he won't choose anybody who's angry or upset, you have to be ready to have fun, so try to relax, hang out, show off your thing, try to meet people and listen to their dreams, and if we're lucky, someone gets the magic butterfly and the ride of their life!"

Everyone cheers, with more bagpipe riffs.

"One more thing," the girl adds. "Stylist doesn't let anyone get hurt, so _do not_ attack the chosen if they get to fly! There are freaky-ass emergency powers in every butterfly, someone jealous tried to jump a kid who got picked over in the group in Montmartre and everyone got locked down in crystal cages for an hour listening to, like, calming piano music, so let's be better than those guys, okay?"

Everyone pretty much goes back to what they were doing, only more dramatically - the Renaissance girl is posing under a tree, the Spiderman is posing up _in_ a tree, the girl in the hat is craning her neck hopefully, and the three bagpipers may actually be attempting to synchronize. Marinette isn't sure.

Paintstroke comes hesitantly over to her and scuffs her foot nervously. "Madame, I didn't want to bring down anyone's mood, but... I don't know what you know, but this isn't really for you? The Stylist tells you some stuff when he picks you, he says it's okay to tell anyone you want, but nobody too young or too old is going to get a butterfly."

 _In my day adults got akumatized too_ , Marinette doesn't say.

"That's okay," Marinette says. "I was just curious. I'm a fashion designer, I always like to keep up with what's happening. Is it okay if I sit here?"

"I can't stop you," Paintstroke shrugs. "Just don't freak out if you see something weird happen?"

Marinette once fought a tyrannosaur; Marinette once went back in time.

"I think I'll be okay," Marinette says, and then they both turn as they hear an "oh! oh!"

Purple light is washing over the hijabi girl; when it clears, her skirt has turned into fins and wings, and there's light starting to pulse from her feet.

"Oh!" she says, starting to lift off into the air, looking down around her while everyone cheers and screams encouragement. She catches sight of Marinette, and the last thing she says before she rockets into the air is "Madame print shop?"

*  
_2016_

_Chat Noir is facing her. They're both on their feet. Gabriel is still sitting, watching with a cruel smile._

_"Ladybug," Adrien says, sounding choked. "I don't want to do this. But you have to give me your earrings. I have to get my mom back."_

_He still has her yoyo. He's between her and the door._

_She's fought Chat Noir before. Dark Cupid, Princess Fragrance, the Puppeteer - he's never been immune to akuma mind control, and akumas with those powers have often tried to turn him against her. There's always_ been _an akuma though, something she can fight, someone whose spell she can try to break, or, if she can't get through to Chat, someone she can de-evilize and break their influence that way. This time Adrien isn't mind-controlled, he's just_ wrong _. How is she supposed to fight that?_

_Adrien takes a step towards her. She needs to come up with something, fast._

*  
2031

The girl is gone for 93 minutes. The bagpipers, mercifully, wander off, but most of the others stick around. Their patience is rewarded when the rocket girl drops back down into the park, firing at the last minute to make a soft and upright landing, and then shimmers with purple until she's back to her original self. A familiar black and purple butterfly flies out of her hat and up into the sky.

"I was Ariane!" the girl says excitedly, as everyone clusters around and her friend hugs her. "I flew, I flew!"

"You were beautiful," Paintstroke tells her, and the Renaissance girl puts up her hand for a high-five.

"The Stylist told me he could see my heart and my dream was beautiful," Ariane says dazedly. "Oh. And. I have a message? He wants to see you."

Nine teenaged faces turn and stare where she's looking, at Marinette.

"Aheh," she says nervously. "Maybe he needs something printed?"

*  
_2016_

_"Chat," Marinette says. "Adrien. We've been partners since we got our Miraculouses. Stop and let's talk about this."_

_He takes another step forward. She's running out of space._

_"If I kissed you," Marinette says desperately. "Would that remind you who you are? Is this what your mom would want? He's going to mind-control her, you know, that's what he means about making everything perfect. He's going to mind-control everybody."_

_Adrien shakes his head. "I didn't think I'd ever turn down a kiss from you, my Lady. But I need my family more."_

_"Mind-controlled?" she tries again. She takes a step back and looks around. Think, Marinette. Maybe you can't use your Lucky Charm, but you can still think like you have one! What could you do with that chair, send it rolling into Adrien? Jump to the desk and head for the door? What if it was that vase, how could you use that? Try to trap Gabriel's akuma? Smash it and hold the edge to Gabriel's neck? She could probably get out of here if she's willing to hurt someone, but she doesn't want to be like that._

_"It won't be like that," Adrien says, unconsciously echoing her. "My father isn't like that."_

_Marinette looks over at Gabriel, who is watching them with cold-eyed malice._

_"I don't think making supervillains is good for you," Marinette says, and then stops. There's some idea on the tip of her tongue, that it was a thread from Marinette's sewing table that led them to Hawkmoth... the impossibility of attacking Adrien's father... She takes a breath._

*  
2031

"He said 'the nineteenth hour on the steps'," Ariane tells Marinette. "But he didn't say what steps. Do you know what steps? Do you think he meant Rue Foyatier?"

"Maybe," Marinette says mysteriously. She doesn't.

*  
_2016_

_"Your father calls you the image of perfection," Marinette says. "Is that really who you are?"_

_Adrien pauses, although she can see he's still poised to strike._

_"Does he know you love Ultimate Mecha Strike III?" Marinette asks. "Does he know you love Jagged Stone so much you wanted his album designer to sign your CD case? Does he know you once gave a girl an umbrella because you were hoping to make a friend?"_

_"What?" Adrien says. Somewhere off to the side, Gabriel stands up, but Marinette only has eyes for her kitty._

_"We can find your mother," she tells him again, stressing every word. "But I think she wants to know _you_. Not Chat Noir, not White Fire, not Agreste fashion's signature model."_

_"How do you..." Adrien stammers. He's dropped his hands and looks bewildered._

_"Tikki," Marinette says. "Spots off."_

_Chat Noir's eyes go wide._

_"Marinette?"_

*  
2031

Marinette is a little worried that butterfly-seeking teens are going to follow her to petition the Stylist in person, or cam-search her to see who she meets, but presumably if the Stylist has gotten enough into the secret-identity business to have a super name, they're prepared to deal with that sort of thing. For all Marinette knows she won't be meeting the Stylist in person, just some akuma specially deputized to relay messages.

Or something worse, but, well, Marinette thinks she has a feel for what this is, now, and she thinks she's safe... still, Alya is going to kill her when she finds out Marinette went to this little meet-up without even telling her where she was going.

Marinette hasn't felt anticipation like this since she wore spots. Tension and adrenaline feel like a swarm of ladybugs in her midsection, trying to fix old, almost-forgotten damage.

At nineteen o'clock exactly, Marinette reaches the steps of the Collège Françoise Dupont, and sees someone standing back in the shadows at the top of the stairs.

It's not too late to call Alya. She could run, even if she can't run on the rooftops any more.

Sometimes you just have to follow a thread to where it ends up.

"I'm less late than I used to be," she says, raising her voice a little. She starts walking up the stairs.

"Come to find out who's making supervillains?" a voice asks. The figure, still in shadow, takes a step forward.

"Nope," Marinette says, starting to smile. "I haven't seen a supervillain in Paris in years."

"You could be looking at one now," he says.

"I don't think so," Marinette says. "Hello, Adrien."

He steps out of the shadows, and, oh, she hasn't seen his face in half her life, but she could never mistake it. "Hello, Marinette."

*  
_2016_

_"Adrien," Gabriel barks. "Take her Miraculous!"_

_Adrien looks at his father, and back at Marinette. She can see something awful breaking over his face, a small transformation in itself._

_He tosses her the yoyo he's still holding, that didn't disappear with the rest of her transformation, and turns away, like he can't stand to look at either of them._

_Marinette isn't Ladybug like this, but she's thrown that yoyo a thousand times, and her body remembers - she snaps her wrist and it flies out to wrap itself around Gabriel. He doesn't try to dodge, or struggle, just looks at her with incredulous, hate-filled eyes._

_When his arms are looped to his sides, she steps forward and removes the brooch from his neck, and he immediately slumps to the ground, like she's switched him off, kwami vanished._

_"He's still breathing," Marinette says, checking, voice shaking._

_"Oh my god," Adrien says, sounding shaky too, and she looks and he's visibly trembling. "We - I almost - " Marinette steps forward and tries to wrap her arms around him as tightly as her yoyo is still wrapped around his unconscious father._

*  
2031

"When did you figure it out?" Adrien asks. They're standing in the shadows by the doorway, just two adults loitering around a collège after hours, nothing suspicious here.

"I wasn't completely sure until I heard your voice," Marinette admits. "I, ah, we - " She can feel herself blushing, of all the stupid things, like the past fifteen years haven't done anything for her.

"It seemed like someone who had really thought about what that power could do and how it could be used not to hurt people," she makes herself say. "And who knew enough to find the Miraculous, on the other side of the world - did you go to the secret valley?" she asks. "Did you see your father?"

Adrien winces. "My mother is there now," he says, sighing a little. "For all she said she wanted us to live a normal life and be done with all that, in the end, she couldn't stay away."

"Oh," Marinette says. He feels like too much of a stranger to hug, or put a hand on his arm, but she tries to let her caring show through her eyes. "I'm sorry, Adrien."

He puts his hand on her shoulder, giving it a little squeeze. "It's okay," he says. "That time together, when I was in lycée and university, that was priceless. Um, no offense."

Marinette shakes her head. "I have never resented you for getting your mom back," she says. "As far as I'm concerned, we did what we were supposed to do, and we won."

* _  
2016_

_"How did you know I wouldn't," Adrien says, pulling back and grabbing her shoulders and looking at her. He's still Chat Noir and his claws dig slightly into her shoulders, without her suit to protect her. "You - you couldn't have fought me, like this, how did you know I wouldn't do it?"_

_"Chat Noir might fight Ladybug," Marinette says, trying to explain what had, for a moment, seemed so obvious. "I mean, mind control, or s-something, but Chat Noir would never fight Marinette, and Adrien would really never attack Marinette, that's - not even - it doesn't go in the same picture at all, even - " She realizes she's starting to stammer, reverting back to Marinette-talking-to-Adrien now that the crisis is apparently over._

_"Marinette," Adrien says, like he's noticing again that it's really her. "You were Ladybug, all this time? And - and my father was Hawkmoth? And my mom is alive!"_

_"We can find her," Marinette says, grateful for a next task, something to focus on. There's still Gabriel Agreste on the floor, and they need to do something about that, too, but she has no idea what. Take his Miraculous to Master Fu - but what about Gabriel? "He said calls and letters, we can search his office, there has to be something - "_

_Adrien looks around wildly._

_"I don't think you need to do that," Tikki says in her sweet little voice, and Marinette had almost forgotten she was there, her focus was so tightly and entirely on Adrien. "I hear someone out front!"_

_Adrien and Marinette look at each other and bolt for the atrium, Adrien immediately pulling ahead because he's still transformed. When Marinette comes through the doorway, she sees him frozen on the stairs, staring at a beautiful blonde woman she recognizes from her portrait._

_"Mom?" Adrien is saying, like he just can't believe it._

_The woman tilts her head and her eyes briefly meet Marinette's; her eyes look a thousand years old._

_"Adrien," she says, looking back at him. "I almost didn't recognize you in the ears."_

*  
2031

"I missed you," Adrien says. "It felt stranger knowing I used to be Chat Noir than when I was constantly running around being him, like this whole chapter of my life had suddenly closed, and this door locked behind me, and now nobody would ever even see it."

Marinette nods. "It was strange for me and I was still in Paris," she says. "I would look up at the Eiffel Tower and think, 'I used to swing up that like it was nothing'."

"I wished for a long time we had had more time," Adrien says. "But I decided it's better to have had it at all, if only for a little while - that's part of why I'm. Um."

"Akumatizing kids non-evilly," Marinette fills in. Adrien runs his hand through his hair.

"I told Alya," Marinette says, to break the silence. "Um. Not everything about the last day. But, uh, the major points, and most of what your father said. I know she did some looking into his life, and, like, the Red Star/White Star part of his story, but I don't think she ever found anything."

Adrien rolls his neck like it's gotten stiff. "My mother told me some things," he says. "She used to - her vision used to show her a lot of things, that she didn't necessarily go looking for."

"I used to wish we'd had another hour," Marinette says, a little wryly. "Like, she hadn't had her Miraculous in over a year, and her timing still had to be that precise? I know we were panicking, but, I don't know. I spent so much time afterwards, trying to make it all add up, like if I just could have talked to you - except I would have been a babbling mess, but - "

"You saved me," Adrien says, cutting her off. "I mean, you did every time, every time we were partners and you got the akuma, but - that time. Thank you, fifteen years late."

"No, no," Marinette says, "I mean, you're - " And there she is, flustered again. For a moment, all she can do is look up at him, trying to collect herself. It's so strange to really look at him, past all her memories, to see this man, taller, broader, heavier in the jaw, less unreal than he used to be, still good-looking but no longer model-stunning.

She wonders what he sees - she's taller and broader too, hair short, clothes blandly professional.

"Actually I wanted to ask you something," Adrien says, and her stupid, traitorous heart - thinking it's still fifteen - skips a beat.

* _  
2016_

_"I don't understand," Adrien says. He's out of the ears - Marinette had turned politely away while he ran to his mother, and he was Adrien again when she looked back. Madame Agreste had plunged into a flurry of brisk, efficient activity - sending Adrien to the kitchen for food for their kwamis, taking out her phone and calling Master Fu, telling him he needed to come, and summoning Nathalie._

_"Gabriel is not well and I will be handling things for now," Madame Agreste had said, and Nathalie had just nodded like there was nothing strange about Adrien's supposedly-missing mother appearing out of the blue, with Gabriel tied up and unconscious in his own office upstairs. Marinette wonders how much Nathalie had known. Marinette's not entirely sure why she's still there, but nobody has suggested that she leave, and it feels wrong to just leave Adrien in the middle of all this._

_And now Madame Agreste has just announced that she wants him to leave Paris with her immediately._

_"The Miraculouses change you," she says. "I just want you to have a chance at a normal life, my darling. I always wished you could just be a child, but your father never agreed. But now you have a chance, just a few last years before university - you've just started lycée, it'll be better to start over now than to wait - "_

_"But I have friends here," Adrien says. He looks over at Marinette, and back at his mother. "I finally have friends."_

_"You'll make more friends," his mother says. It's impossible to tell whether it's normal maternal reassurance or a prophecy, a vision she's actually had. There's a weight to her voice in everything she says, a sort of calm, gentle immovability._

_"Why don't you go and start to think about what you want to pack," his mother says, in her inevitable voice. "I want to talk to Marinette for a minute."_

_Adrien shrugs at her helplessly, sort of sheepishly, and leaves her alone with his mother. Marinette sits up very straight with her knees together, like it's back to a terrifying parents-meet-girlfriend scenario._

_"Please thank your friend for her blog," she says. "It has been nice to follow the news of my son, under one of his names. I have missed him so much."_

_"Of, of course, Madame Agreste," Marinette stammers._

_"I'm glad you got to ride the dragon. Do you know, I think in every timeline I've ever seen, someone gets to ride the dragon? Why do you think that might be?"_

_"I - I'm sure I don't know," Marinette says._

_"I think the dragon really wanted to get to exist," Madame Agreste says. "I saw the dragon even before I saw my little boy in that catsuit."_

_If Marinette thinks too hard about it having been Adrien in the catsuit she's going to spontaneously combust in front of his mother. She nods and rubs her neck nervously._

_"When Master Fu gets here, he'll tell you that creation and destruction must stay in balance," Madame Agreste says. "I am asking you for Adrien's sake to give up your power, so he can lay down his."_

_For a second, all Marinette can do is blink. "What? Why?"_

_"It's much easier to give up a Miraculous than to have it taken from you," Madame Agreste says. "I almost died after Gabriel dumped me in Le Havre. It took me a long time to come back to myself."_

_Marinette involuntarily looks upstairs, where, as far as she knows, Gabriel is still on the floor._

_"He's okay," Madame Agreste says. "He'll have more help than I did. But I don't want that for Adrien." She shakes her head. "It will be harder the longer you wait. The changes... start to stay with you."_

_"That doesn't sound so bad," Marinette mutters, thinking of Ladybug versus her everyday self._

_"Luck can be easier to bear than destruction," Adrien's mother says, and Marinette feels instantly guilty. Of course she has to think about Adrien. If his mother can really see different futures, she probably knows all the ways this can turn out. She probably knows what's best for her son._

_"I don't even have a choice," Marinette says to herself._

_"It is your choice entirely," Madame Agreste says. "This isn't one of those stories where the grownups show up to say the magic is over. There are no guarantees. All I'm doing is making sure you know you're at a turning point."_

_"I have to talk to Tikki," Marinette says, and flees._

*  
2031

"I know my mother talked you into it," Adrien says. "It won't be the same, but, well, I can at least get you up there."

Marinette blinks, not understanding.

"So what do you think," Adrien asks. "Want to go for a run?"

* _  
2016_

_Tikki and Adrien's little cat-kwami are sitting on the kitchen counter in an absolute mess of crumbs and smears of cheese. Possibly they've been wrestling in it. Or... Marinette isn't sure she wants to know._

_"Tikki," Marinette says helplessly, looking at her dear little face, and Tikki flies to her immediately and snuggles into the base of her throat._

_"Marinette," Tikki says. "You did it! I'm so proud of you!"_

_"Tikki," Marinette says, scooping her into her hand and stepping away, across the kitchen. "Tikki, Adrien's mom... wants me to give you up."_

_The tiny godlet sighs. "My time with my humans is always so short," she says. "Wayzz gets his guardians for a century!"_

_"I'm not ready either!" Marinette says. "So - let's not - "_

_"Superheroes don't go very long without supervillains," Tikki says. "Choosing to give something up isn't the worst way something can end."_

*  
2031

"Oh!" Marinette says. She waves her hand around in front of her eyes, vaguely indicating a mask. "You mean - me? Up there?"

"Hawkmoth made an Anti-bug," Adrien says. "I think I can give my Lady her spots."

* _  
2016_

_Marinette stands with Tikki for a long moment, holding her against her heart, until Adrien bounds in with a smile that looks more like Chat Noir's than anything she's ever seen on Adrien's face._

_"My mom says I don't have to model any more!" he says. "Or diet, or take all those lessons - Plagg, I'm free!"_

_"Yeah," Adrien's kwami says, hopping over to his shoulder. "You almost are."_

*  
2031

"Oh," Marinette says again.

"I know it's kind of personal," Adrien says. "The mind-reading part. Well, it's more like emotions, but - I would understand if - "

"It's not that," Marinette says, although the prospect of Adrien reading her emotions is, if anything, even more off-putting than the idea that his mother might be watching them in a vision thirty years ago. "I -"

She lets herself think about it, the swooping, stomach-floating feeling of falling and swinging, of catching herself and throwing herself at the sky. She tries to picture her thirty-year-old self running on the rooftops, spots on her solid grown-up figure, and then stops - maybe Adrien can unwind that clock too?

* _  
2016_

_"Fu just pulled up," Madame Agreste tells them. "Marinette, you'll need to retrieve your yoyo."_

_Nathalie opens the door to Master Fu and two tall young men, one of whom, for some reason, is carrying an antique phonograph._

_"Guardian," Madame Agreste says coolly._

_"Witness," he says. They give each other the smallest nods. Marinette gets the feeling there's not a lot of love lost between them._

_"I will bring you the Peacock Miraculous," Madame Agreste says. "Marinette has the Moth, and Gabriel is upstairs."_

_"Don't you want to say goodbye to Duusu?" Master Fu asks._

_Madame Agreste blinks slowly. "No," she says. They stare at each other for a moment._

_"I'll go get my yoyo!" Marinette says, too loudly. She doesn't realize until she's looking down at Gabriel that Adrien has followed her up the stairs._

_"If you put your hand on it and transform, it will all sort itself out," Tikki says._

_Marinette takes the Moth Miraculous out of her pocket and hands it to Adrien - it feels wrong to transform while she's holding it. She looks Tikki in the eye, trying not to cry._

_"Tikki, spots on!"_

*  
2031

"I don't know," Marinette says.

* _  
2016_

_Her yoyo melts back into its rightful place on her costume as she transforms, and then there she is, standing there looking at Adrien. It feels very personal suddenly to have done that in front of him, like she had casually started taking off her clothes. She's probably red under the mask._

_"Ladybug," Adrien says. He's kind of pink too._

_She hugs him, impulsively, and his arms go around her like he never wants to let go._

*  
2031

"Do you think we really would have turned against each other?" Marinette asks. She thought about it for years, and it's her best guess for what everyone was trying to avoid.

"I don't think so," Adrien says. "But... you were right, that fighting was part of our nature when we were in the masks. I don't know what would have happened."

It's too dark where they're standing to tell whether his eyes are still just as green.

"I think I'll pass," Marinette says. She lets out a breath, and feels her shoulders relax from tension she didn't even realize she was holding. "I appreciate the offer, truly. But I don't think Paris needs Ladybug right now, and, well."

Adrien reaches out to her shoulder again.

"Marinette is allowed to need things too," he says softly.

* _  
2016_

_Marinette reluctantly steps away and de-transforms. Tikki flies up to hover in front of her face._

_"I love you, Marinette," Tikki says._

_"I love you, Tikki," Marinette answers, and pulls out her earrings._

*  
2031

Her stupid heart is pounding in her ears. She doesn't know this man at all - he could be more like Adrien, like Chat Noir, or like neither of them. She's not sure she's much like Ladybug or her collège self.

"What if Marinette needs dinner with an old friend?" she asks.

* _  
2016_

_"What are you doing?" Adrien asks, eyes wide._

_Marinette looks down sadly at the earrings in her palm._

_"Wouldn't be the same without my partner," she says. "I'll give you a minute." She's not sure if she means with Plagg, or with his father._

_She goes down the stairs, where Master Fu has somehow opened up the phonograph and taken out an eight-sided box. He's settling an ornate peacock emblem back into one of the box's compartments._

_"Here," Marinette says, handing him the earrings. She feels like she should have some better words for this moment but she doesn't._

_Master Fu bows to her, and accepts them, placing them carefully in their space._

_"And here," Adrien says behind her. On his outstretched palm, he has his father's brooch, and his ring._

*  
2031

"I could do dinner," Adrien says.

"Good," Marinette says, "Because you should get to know _this_ me, I'm, like, fifteen years more awesome."

It startles a laugh out of Adrien, who steps away from the wall and tucks her hand into his elbow.

"Well, Madame Awesome, have a place in mind?"

They start down the stairs together, falling easily into step.

"I know a few," Marinette says. It's so strange, being next to him like this after all these years. The fabric of his coat is soft under her hand; she always wished she could touch his clothes in his modeling spreads. "Teenage fantasy business doesn't get you out to restaurants?"

"It's working out okay so far," Adrien says cheekily, grinning down at her, and - oh. Hm. She can feel herself blushing again.

* _  
2016_

_As Master Fu closes up the box, and the young men come down the stairs with Gabriel slung between them, Adrien pulls her into one last hug._

_"I guess this is the miracul-last time," he whispers, and then she's groaning and shaking her head as she waves goodbye._

*  
2031

"Oh yikes," Marinette says, as they walk down the street. "I should call Alya before she cam hunts my face."

Adrien waves his free hand, and something starts flapping down from the roofline of the buildings beside them... small white butterflies, pale and almost glowing in the Paris evening. Within moments they're walking in a loose, shifting cloud.

Marinette lets go of Adrien's elbow.

"They confuse cameras pretty well," he says, a little nervously. "Um, sorry?"

She smiles and takes his hand. "They're beautiful," she says, and they keep walking, hand in hand.

**

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think any of the actual lyrics ended up in here, but I listened to "Busby Berkeley Dreams" a lot while writing this, so hat tip to the Magnetic Fields just in case.


End file.
